Popsicles and inexorable truths

At some point in motherhood every woman is smacked right in the cheek with that inescapable truth that we all hate.
They grow up...
fast.
It's something old ladies in the grocery store have warned us about for years, something our mothers have always told us, but it doesn't become such a reality until sometime after you have them in your home.
And it hurts.
Surely some of this sentimentality can be attributed to my advanced state of pregnancy, but I would wager that even the most unemotional mama has at some point shed tears over the fact that her baby is no longer that. And now I know why my mom cried so much. Surely, it was just a brief moment ago that I was waking at 2am (and totally miserable might I add) with this tiny, bald little bundle of squirm that is now so busy that all the pictures we take of him manage to look more like a blur than a child. And it is at moments like this that the inexorable reality comes into perfect focus,
they were not made to be held on to.
It's constantly before me that my children are not made to be close to me, reliant on me, they were not made to be constantly needy of me. From the moment they are born, they are in a perpetual state of moving farther from me (in my belly, to being held always, to walking, to running, to being embarassed by my hugs.)
Thankfully, I think back to my own life (and mom, you can stop crying now) because I realize that there is surely some portion of me that will always need my own mother. Advice, comfort, knowing that when I'm sad, discouraged or confused she has some God-given power to know me well enough to deliver exactly what I need to hear (even if it's "get over yourself" and it often is). And while I don't think you ever get over the fact that your baby is not a baby...(or a toddler, or a kindergartner, or even a high schooler.....well, scratch the last one), we can at least find comfort in knowing we are always pointing them to the one thing that all of us can (and should) hold on to at all phases of life and with such intensity that we refuse to let go... and that is God.
The One who knows better than all else how hard it is to let go of a child.